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cyranoj2265
Reviews
Haywire (2011)
It's a shame about Carano losing her mind...
... because as this movie makes clear, she had the makings of a true action star.
She's enjoyable to watch here and convincingly badass, and the overall film has a nice retro feel to it, like something that could almost have been produced in the Seventies. (The whole cast is impressive, actually. It must have been quite an experience to head up a movie where your supporting players are the likes of Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Bill Paxton and Antonio Banderas.).While it's clear that she's a martial artist first and a thespian second, she still does a solid job of selling Mallory Kane as tough and heroic.
The plot is, as many have pointed out, far from original. But that's okay. This movie is still well worth a watch, and a reminder of what were happier days for a talent who could have achieved so much more.
Hell on the Border (2019)
Gotta dissent from the negative reviews
As an introductory Bass Reeves adventure, kicking off the career of the historical figure and serving up some solid Western gunslinging in the process, I thought this was great. I was actually pleasantly surprised to learn this was a Bass Reeves movie and that it was pretty well-done.
I can't speak to the historicity of it: I only know Bass Reeves' storied career in outline. I *do* know that it's only an introduction of the character and the beginning of his career, though, and that it's clearly conceived as the beginning of a series, so I personally would discount reviews that are damning it for not conveying the full historical breadth of Reeves' character and accomplishments as being irrelevant.
Did Reeves have to fight through prejudice to get his star? I do not know. I *do* know that it feels evocative of the waning era of Reconstruction, that the inclusion of a group of Kansas exodusters is on-point for the time, that the actors do fine work with the material (including the villain), and that all the basic beats of the early stages of the Reeves story are here. If some of it is fictionalized, I'm not too fussed: the fiction hangs together and makes for a fun Western adventure story and we get plenty of excellent gunslinging action.
I was surprised to find all the negative reviews here, honestly. It's a competent Western, not *particularly* spectacular but certainly fun and captivating, and I hope the further entries in the series they clearly envisioned actually happen. If they do, I'll seek them out.